DC HOSA Leadership Hub
Domain

Community

Health literacy, service, and acting on what a neighbourhood needs.

Lead Yourself

What do I do?

Ask Me 3

Lead YourselfCommunityCONNECT10 minCE: Healthy Living

Three questions, asked of any provider at any appointment, turn a visit you sit through into one you understand. It is the most transferable thing in this domain — a member uses it at their own appointment, teaches it to a parent, and hands it out at a community table.

The three
  • What is my main problem?
  • What do I need to do?
  • Why is it important for me to do this?
How to use it
  • Ask them out loud. Providers are trained to answer them and most are relieved to be asked.
  • If the answer to the second one has more than three parts, ask which one comes first.
  • Write the answers down before you leave the room. Not after.
Teach it to one person

The card is not learned until you have handed it to someone who will use it — a parent, a grandparent, a younger sibling. That is also what the Healthy Living portfolio scores: the ability to explain a health decision to someone else.

Do this
  1. Print the wallet card. Put it in your phone case.
  2. Use it at your next appointment, or role-play it with a chapter partner in five minutes.
  3. Give one card to one family member and explain why.

Where it shows up: Every appointment you or your family attend. Healthy Living Round Two, where explaining a personal health decision is directly scored.

Coach note
Have members practise this on each other before they take it to a real appointment. The awkwardness is in saying it aloud the first time, not in the questions.
Grounded in
PAsk Me 3 — Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Ask Me 3: Good Questions for Your Good Health, developed by the Partnership for Clear Health Communication and now maintained by IHI. Practitioner tool; short enough that students use it.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-ask-me-3  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Community

Source Check

Lead YourselfCommunityCONNECT10 minCE: Health Literacy Ambassador

Most health claims a member meets are in a feed, not a library. A four-question filter applied in thirty seconds is worth more than any lecture on misinformation, because it works at the moment the claim appears.

Four questions
  • Who published this? A person, an organisation, a company? Can you find them outside this post?
  • When? Health guidance changes. A date is not optional.
  • What are they selling? A product, a programme, a subscription, an outrage. If you cannot tell, that is the answer.
  • Does MedlinePlus agree? Search the topic there. If it is not there, or says something different, the claim needs more than one source before you repeat it.
MedlinePlus as the cross-reference

Free, plain-language, from the National Library of Medicine, and citable. It is also the reference source for the Health Literacy Ambassador programme, so learning to reach for it does double work.

What to do with a claim that fails

Do not repost. Do not argue in the comments. If it matters, take it to a chapter meeting as a Source Check example — that is a five-minute segment with no preparation.

Do this
  1. Take the last health claim you saw in a feed. Run the four questions. Time it.
  2. Find the same topic on MedlinePlus. Note what it says differently.
  3. Bring one failed claim to the next chapter meeting.

Where it shows up: Any feed, any day. Health Literacy Ambassador, which exists to counter health misinformation and uses MedlinePlus as its anchor.

Coach note
Do not run this as a lesson about misinformation. Run it as a game — bring three claims, the chapter scores them. The filter is learned by using it, and the members who learn it teach their families.
Grounded in
RSource evaluation; MedlinePlus (National Library of Medicine)
MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine, as the credible-source anchor named in the Health Literacy Ambassador guideline. The four-question filter is a DC HOSA construction consistent with standard source-evaluation practice.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-source-check  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Community

Read It, Use It

Lead YourselfCommunityEMPOWER15 min

Health literacy starts with the basic version: can you read a label, a dosage instruction, an appointment letter, and do what it says? Most members assume they can. Many cannot, on the documents that matter, and nobody has ever checked.

Functionalread it, use it Interactiveask, explain, help someoneelse navigate Criticalwhy outcomes differ,and what would move them Lead Yourself · memberLead a Team · officerLead Beyond · state officer this card
The three levels, and which one this is

Health literacy is not one skill. It rises in three steps, and this card is the first.

  • Functional — reading and applying basic health information. A label, a dose, a notice. This card.
  • Interactive — extracting information and acting on it with other people. Asking a provider, helping a family member navigate a system, explaining something accurately to a peer. Lead a Team.
  • Critical — analysing information and using it to change the conditions that produce health. Why outcomes differ by ward, and what would move them. Lead Beyond.
Four documents to practise on
  • An over-the-counter medicine label. Find the dose for your age, the maximum in 24 hours, and the one thing it says not to take it with.
  • A prescription label. Find how many, how often, with or without food, and the refill count.
  • An appointment letter. Find the date, the place, what to bring, and what happens if you miss it.
  • A vaccine information sheet. Find what it is for, the common side effects, and who to call.
Do this
  1. Take the four documents to a chapter meeting. In pairs, find each item and time it.
  2. Note which one took longest. That is the document type the chapter should make a handout for.
  3. Move to Lead a Team when you can do all four in under two minutes each.

Where it shows up: Your own life first. Then the chapter’s health fair table, where the same documents are what people bring you.

Coach note
This looks too basic to bother with. Run it once anyway. The members who struggle with the prescription label are the ones who will never say so, and they are the ones who most need the next card.
Grounded in
RThree levels of health literacy — Nutbeam
Nutbeam (2000), Health Promotion International — functional, interactive and critical health literacy.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-read-it-use-it  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Community

Lead a Team

How do I get a group to do it?

Score It Before You Post It

Lead a TeamCommunityCONNECT15 minCE: Health Education · Public Service Announcement · Health Literacy Ambassador

Every flyer, post, poster and presentation a chapter makes is patient education material. There is a validated instrument that scores such material on two things — can people understand it, and can they act on it — and it takes ten minutes. It turns ‘is this a good flyer’ from a taste argument into a number.

Understandability → Actionability → clear ask, murky messagethey act on something they misread aim herethey get it, and they knowexactly what to do next most first draftstoo much text, no verb clear, but it ends at awarenessthe usual chapter flyer
Two scores
  • Understandability — can a person of any background work out the key messages? Plain words, short sentences, one idea at a time, a clear purpose stated up front, visuals that help rather than decorate.
  • Actionability — can they identify what to do? A specific action, stated as a verb, with the how and the when. ‘Get screened’ is not actionable. ‘Call this number to book a free screening on Saturday’ is.
The gate

Nothing the chapter produces goes out until it has been scored. Not as bureaucracy — as the one discipline that improves everything the chapter already makes without adding a single new activity.

  • Score it yourself first. Then have someone who did not make it score it. The gap between the two numbers is the finding.
  • Anything under the threshold you set gets one more pass. Usually the fix is cutting words and adding one sentence that starts with a verb.
  • Keep the scores. Six months in, the chapter can see whether its materials are getting better.
Do this
  1. Take the last thing your chapter published. Score it on the printed sheet.
  2. Rewrite the one sentence that would most raise the actionability score.
  3. Adopt the gate at the next officer meeting. Write it into the charter.

Where it shows up: Every chapter communication. Health Education, Public Service Announcement, Community Awareness — the rubrics for all three score exactly these two things. Every Level 2 Ambassador project.

Coach note
The first time a chapter scores its own flyer, the number is usually lower than they expect and the room goes quiet. Let it. Then ask what one change would move it most. That question is the whole tool.
Grounded in
RPatient Education Materials Assessment Tool — AHRQ
PEMAT and User’s Guide, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — validated instrument scoring understandability and actionability of print and audiovisual materials.
Federal health resources have moved and been revised. Re-verify the PEMAT link and current version before distributing the printed sheet.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-pemat-before-you-post  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Community

The Health-Literate Chapter

Lead a TeamCommunityBUILD30 minCE: Community Awareness

Health literacy has two definitions now, and the second one is about organisations — how well they enable people to find, understand and use health information. A chapter is an organisation that produces health information. That makes it auditable, and this card is the audit.

Five questions, scored 1–4

Adapted from the federal toolkit’s organisational assessment. Run in autumn, run again in spring.

  • Does our communication reach people who are not already in the room?
  • Can a family member who does not work in health care read our materials?
  • Do our events end with a next step someone can take, or do they end at awareness?
  • Is anything we publish available in the languages our school community speaks?
  • When we tell people something, do we check what they understood? (See Teach-Back.)
Then one improvement cycle

Plan, do, study, act. Pick the lowest score. Decide one change. Make it. Score again. That is the whole cycle, and the second run is what turns a score into evidence.

The public-availability fact

The federal toolkit this adapts is publicly available and may be reproduced without permission in the United States for non-commercial use. DC HOSA can reprint the relevant tools into chapter material directly rather than paraphrasing. Keep the AHRQ citation intact when you do.

Do this
  1. Score the five questions at an officer meeting. Do not average — the lowest number is the finding.
  2. Choose one change for the lowest score. Name an owner and a date.
  3. Score again after the change. Report both numbers to the chapter.

Where it shows up: Twice a year at officer meetings. It is also one third of the Chapter Health Literacy Challenge.

Coach note
The multilingual question is the one chapters skip and the one that matters most in DC. If a chapter scores itself 4 on it, ask to see the translated material.
Grounded in
ROrganizational health literacy — Healthy People 2030; AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, Tool 2; PDSA
Healthy People 2030 organizational health literacy definition (ODPHP). AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 3rd ed. (2024), Tool 2 and the PDSA worksheet.
Re-verify federal links before distribution; the toolkit edition and location have changed before.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-health-literate-chapter  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Community

Teach-Back

Lead a TeamCommunityEMPOWER5 minCE: Healthy Living · Health Education · Public Service Announcement

You do not know whether someone understood you until they say it back in their own words. Teach-back is a check on the explainer, not a quiz on the listener — which is why it is a leadership skill and not only a clinical one, and why five minutes of it at every meeting rehearses three competitive events at once.

The round

Five minutes of a chapter meeting. No slides.

  • One member explains a health concept in ninety seconds. Ask Me 3, a vaccine, why hydration matters — anything from MedlinePlus.
  • A second member explains it back, in their own words, to the first.
  • The first member revises the explanation based on what did not land. That revision is the learning.
The phrasing that makes it work
  • Not ‘do you understand?’ — everyone says yes.
  • ‘I want to make sure I explained that well. Can you tell me how you would describe it to someone else?’
  • If they cannot, the explanation failed, not the listener.
Do this
  1. Put a five-minute Teach-Back round on the next three agendas.
  2. Rotate who explains. Nobody explains twice until everyone has once.
  3. Keep a list of the concepts that took more than one revision — those are the chapter’s handout topics.

Where it shows up: Every chapter meeting. Healthy Living Round Two, Health Education and Public Service Announcement all score the ability to explain something so it lands.

Coach note
Watch for the explainer who blames the listener. Redirect, gently and every time: what would you change in what you said? That reframe is the entire point.
Grounded in
RTeach-back method — AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, Tool 5
AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 3rd ed. (2024), Tool 5: Use the Teach-Back Method.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-teach-back  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Community

Become an Ambassador

Lead a TeamCommunityADVANCE45 minCE: Health Literacy Ambassador

Health Literacy Ambassador is the only event in the catalogue every member in every division can complete, with no entry cap and no ranking, and Level 1 ends with the member delivering a presentation at a chapter meeting. That means every ambassador generates chapter programming as a side effect. It is a participation programme wearing an event’s clothes, and the chapters that treat it that way get a year of meetings written for free.

Level 1
  • Complete the online module. A certificate and Level 2 access instructions arrive by email.
  • Build a presentation on a MedlinePlus health topic — length, content and style are the member’s choice.
  • Deliver it at a chapter meeting or in class. That delivery is the chapter’s meeting segment.
Level 2
  • Complete the virtual escape-room module — MedlinePlus-based puzzles. Members may work in a small group, but each needs their own computer and submits for their own certificate.
  • Complete one of five projects using MedlinePlus: posters for a physician’s office · an article for the Chartered Association newsletter · materials for a career, senior, clinic or hospital fair · patient handouts for professionals or employers · educational tips shared with others.
  • Present the project to peers. Upload the presentation and supporting documents as one combined PDF — new for 2026–27; the old activity-tracking system is no longer used.
The access checklist — this is what decides whether it happens

The friction is invisible from outside and decisive inside a DC classroom.

  • Certificates are emailed, and many school email systems block external senders. Every participant needs a working personal email address before starting. Some will not have one — find out first.
  • Level 1 needs a laptop or Chromebook. It switches between two sites; a phone will not work.
  • Level 2 needs guest sign-in and one computer per member, even in a group.
  • Run Level 1 as a whole-chapter session in a booked computer lab, not as homework. This single decision is the highest-leverage one in the whole programme.
The window

Activities from 1 June 2026 to 15 May 2027 count for international recognition. DC HOSA sets its own deadline and recognition method for Chartered Association recognition — until that is published, members default to the international window.

Do this
  1. Book the computer lab. Confirm every participant has a personal email that receives external mail.
  2. Run Level 1 as one session. Schedule the resulting presentations across the year’s meetings — one or two per meeting, with a sign-up board and a topic register so no two members build the same topic.
  3. Score every Level 2 project on the PEMAT sheet before it goes anywhere.

Where it shows up: Chapter meetings all year. Every Level 2 project is patient education material, which is the Community Awareness and Public Service Announcement rubric in practice.

Coach note
The access checklist is the advisor’s job and it is the entire difference between a chapter with fifteen ambassadors and a chapter with two. A member who wants to do this and does not have a personal email or a laptop at home simply does not complete it, and nobody finds out why.
Grounded in
RHealth Literacy Ambassador ILC Guidelines 2026–27; expectancy-value cost term
Health Literacy Ambassador ILC Guidelines, September 2026, hosa.org (NLM-sponsored). The access barriers are the cost term of Expectancy-Value Theory (Eccles & Wigfield) applied literally.
Guideline mechanics — upload method, module platforms, deadlines — are as published for 2026–27 and are revised mid-season. Re-pull before promoting.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-become-an-ambassador  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Community

Map Your Ward

Lead a TeamCommunityCONNECT30 minCE: Community Awareness · Health Literacy Ambassador

A poster in the school hallway reaches the people who are already reached. The organisations in your ward that do health outreach — clinics, libraries, faith communities, recreation centres, mutual aid — already hold the community’s trust. Health literacy work done alongside them reaches people a school-based event never will.

Who to map

One page, one ward. Name, what they do, who they reach, a contact, and whether the chapter has ever spoken to them.

  • Community clinics and health centres.
  • Public library branches — they run programmes and have display space.
  • Faith communities with health ministries or regular gatherings.
  • Recreation centres and senior centres.
  • Mutual aid groups and neighbourhood associations.
  • The ward’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission — it knows who else is doing what.
What the map is for
  • Level 2 Ambassador projects need a place — a physician’s office, a fair, a clinic. The map is the venue list.
  • The advocacy Audience element: a chapter that wants to be heard needs to know who is already listening in the ward.
  • Partnerships that outlive this year’s officers, because the map is written down.
Do this
  1. Fill the printed map for your ward. Six organisations minimum.
  2. Pick one the chapter has never contacted. Write the one-sentence ask.
  3. Put the map in the Transition Packet so next year’s officers start with it.

Where it shows up: Before any community event. Every Level 2 Ambassador placement. The One-Page Ask at Voice · Lead Beyond.

Coach note
Chapters default to the school hallway because it needs no permission. Ask what the chapter’s ward is, then ask for one organisation in it by name. If the answer takes more than five seconds, the map does not exist yet.
Grounded in
PCommunity asset mapping; Lundy Model — Audience
Community partner mapping as a practitioner convention. The Audience element from the Lundy Model of Participation (R) is the reason it matters.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-map-your-ward  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Community

Healthy Living, Run Deliberately

Lead a TeamCommunityEMPOWER20 minCE: Healthy Living

Healthy Living asks a member to set a personal health goal, sustain it for months, and present the journey. Framed as behaviour change and self-advocacy — which is what the rubric scores — it is one of the best events in the catalogue. Framed around weight or body, it is the wrong container for a teenager, and the guideline itself says so. The framing is a choice, and it is the chapter’s to make.

What the event actually rewards
  • A specific goal, a baseline taken before the goal period starts, and evidence of sustained effort — the top scoring band asks for nine to twelve months.
  • A five-minute presentation that integrates the portfolio rather than reading from it.
  • The three published sample goals are daily hydration, a running time, and reducing stress headaches through a short daily practice. None is a weight goal. That is the intended framing.
Goals that work

Behaviour or capacity, never body size.

  • ‘Drink water instead of soda at lunch, every school day.’
  • ‘Run a mile without stopping by March.’
  • ‘Sleep before 11 on school nights, four nights a week.’
  • ‘Ten minutes of the breathing practice before every test.’
How to promote it
  • As a behaviour-change and self-advocacy event.
  • Never with before-and-after framing, body imagery, or language that ranks bodies.
  • The goal window opened 1 July 2026 and runs to 15 May 2027 — members are already inside it.
Do this
  1. Write your goal as a behaviour with a frequency. If it contains a number about your body, rewrite it.
  2. Take the baseline before the first day, and discuss it with a licensed provider if the goal involves diet or exercise.
  3. Bring the goal to your advisor for the required signature, and expect them to read it.

Where it shows up: Healthy Living Round Two. Also the member-facing half of the Ask Me 3 and Teach-Back cards, since explaining the journey is what is scored.

Coach note
The advisor signature is a review, not a formality, and it is the event’s main safety mechanism. A goal framed around weight, body size or restriction gets redirected to a behaviour goal before it is signed — the guideline gives you the standing to do that. A member showing distress around food, exercise or body image is routed to the school counsellor and their family and is not steered into this event; a competitive frame around personal health is the wrong container for that student. Portfolio review happens before submission with the student choosing what stays in, and the permission form is signed by a parent or guardian, not collected at the registration table. Quote the guideline’s own guardrails when briefing other advisors — it explicitly discourages any diet or exercise programme not under a licensed provider’s direction.
Grounded in
RHealthy Living ILC Guidelines 2026–27; behaviour-change framing
Healthy Living ILC Guidelines, September 2026 (2026–27), hosa.org, NASM-sponsored — event mechanics, sample goals, and the guideline’s own safeguarding language.
Event mechanics are as published for 2026–27. One published sample question references a ‘Supplementation’ module that does not appear in the five-band test plan; resolve against the NASM course before building any test preparation, which belongs to the Study Hub in any case.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-healthy-living-deliberately  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Community

Lead Beyond

How do I change something outside this room?

The Ward Lens

Lead BeyondCommunityCONNECT40 minCE: World Health & Disparities · Public Health

Health outcomes in DC differ sharply from one ward to the next. Knowing that is not the skill. The skill is moving from ‘this ward has worse outcomes’ to the determinants behind it and the decisions that produced them — and then to the one decision a chapter or an affiliate could actually influence. That is the critical level of health literacy, and it is the level a state officer should be modelling.

Start with the published data, not with a story

DC Health publishes ward-level health data. Use the current release, cite it, and date it. Do not carry a figure from memory or from this card — the numbers move and this card deliberately holds none.

  • Pick one outcome. Life expectancy, a chronic condition, access to a provider, a screening rate.
  • Find it by ward in the current DC Health data. Write down the source and the year.
  • Find the ward where it is worst and the ward where it is best.
Then ask what produces the gap

Determinants, not behaviour. The question is never ‘what are people in that ward doing wrong’.

  • Where are the providers, the pharmacies, the grocery stores, the clinics — and how long does it take to reach them without a car?
  • What does housing, income, and school quality look like, and how long has it looked that way?
  • Which past decisions — zoning, transit, hospital closures, where a clinic was built — shaped the current map?
  • Which of those is a decision someone could still make differently?
Then choose the one thing

A chapter cannot fix a determinant. It can pick one, in one ward, and act on it — a health fair placed where the map says it is needed, a One-Page Ask to the Council about one specific gap, a partnership with the one organisation already working on it.

Do this
  1. Choose one outcome and find it by ward in current DC Health data. Cite it.
  2. List three determinants that plausibly produce the gap. For each, name a decision that shaped it.
  3. Write the one thing your chapter or the SEC could do about one of them, this year.

Where it shows up: SEC strategic planning. The Community domain’s highest level, and the determinants layer under World Health & Disparities and Public Health.

Coach note
Two failure modes. The first is stopping at the disparity — it feels like insight and it is only a fact. The second is blaming behaviour. When an officer says a ward has worse outcomes ‘because people there…’, stop them and ask what is within a mile of that person’s home.
Grounded in
RCritical health literacy — Nutbeam; social determinants of health
Nutbeam (2000) critical level. Social determinants framework per Healthy People 2030 and the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Data: DC Health, current ward-level publications — cite the specific release used.
This card contains no figures on purpose. Any number a member uses must come from a named, dated DC Health source.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-ward-lens  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Community

Organizational Health Literacy

Lead BeyondCommunityBUILD30 min

The second definition of health literacy is about the organisation, not the person: how well it enables people to find, understand and use health information. It applies to DC HOSA exactly as it applies to a chapter. A Chartered Association that tells chapters to communicate clearly while sending dense advisor emails has an organisational health literacy problem of its own, and this is how you find out.

The two definitions

Healthy People 2030 split the old single definition in two and shifted the emphasis from understanding to use, and from the individual to the organisation.

  • Personal — the degree to which individuals can find, understand and use information and services to inform health decisions for themselves and others.
  • Organisational — the degree to which organisations equitably enable individuals to do the same.
Run the chapter audit on the affiliate

The five questions from The Health-Literate Chapter, applied to DC HOSA itself.

  • The website. Can a parent new to CTSOs work out what HOSA is and what it costs in under two minutes?
  • Advisor communications. Score the last three emails on the PEMAT sheet.
  • Conference materials. Is there a next step someone can take, or does it end at information?
  • Family-facing content. In which languages?
  • Recognition programmes. Can a member find out how to qualify without asking someone?
Adopt a plain-language standard

Federal plain-language guidance exists and is free. Adopting it as a house standard for affiliate communication is a decision the SEC and state staff can make in one meeting, and it costs nothing.

Do this
  1. Score the affiliate on the five questions. Publish the scores to the SEC.
  2. Fix the lowest one this term. Name an owner.
  3. Propose the plain-language standard as a Standing Rule.

Where it shows up: SEC and state staff planning. It is also the third of the three parts of the Chapter Health Literacy Challenge — the affiliate has to have done it before asking chapters to.

Coach note
If the SEC proposes the challenge to chapters before running the audit on the affiliate, stop them. Nothing undermines a health literacy campaign faster than an unreadable email announcing it.
Grounded in
ROrganizational health literacy — Healthy People 2030; plain language (federal standard)
Healthy People 2030 definitions of personal and organizational health literacy (ODPHP). Federal plain-language guidelines, plainlanguage.gov.
Re-verify federal links before adopting the standard formally; federal health and plain-language resources have moved.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-organizational-health-literacy  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Community

The Chapter Health Literacy Challenge

Lead BeyondCommunityCONNECT30 minCE: Health Literacy Ambassador

A state-level campaign that every chapter can complete cheaply, that produces affiliate-level evidence rather than an attendance count, and that ties directly to the recognition ladder chapters already care about. It is three existing cards run once each, reported once, and recognised.

The three parts, per chapter
  • Run The Health-Literate Chapter audit once. Report the lowest score.
  • Score one piece of chapter material on the PEMAT sheet. Report the score and one change made.
  • Set a participation proportion for Health Literacy Ambassador Level 1 — the share of members completing it by a stated date. A proportion, not a count, so it is fair across chapters of every size.
Recognition

International HOSA awards no medals for Ambassador. The Chartered Association recognition carries all the motivational weight, and the State Advisor sets it.

  • Tie Ambassador participation to the Standards of Excellence ladder — Emerging, Established, Elite — as one of the criteria that moves a chapter up a tier. That gives the ladder a behaviour to reward.
  • Recognise at SLC, by chapter name. A named cohort in affiliate communications. A banner.
  • Publish the DC deadline and the recognition method before launch. Until they exist, chapters default to the international window and the campaign has no forcing date.
What the SEC gets back

An affiliate-wide dataset: lowest audit scores by chapter, PEMAT scores before and after, Ambassador participation rates. That is something evidence-based to say about the affiliate at the end of the year.

Do this
  1. Run the affiliate-level audit first (Organizational Health Literacy). Do not skip this.
  2. Publish the DC Ambassador deadline and the recognition method. Both are State Advisor decisions.
  3. Launch with two or three early-adopter chapters. Make their result visible. Then the rest.

Where it shows up: The SEC calendar, launched in autumn so the Ambassador window is used. Reported at SLC.

Coach note
This is the one campaign in the Hub where the state staff decisions — deadline, recognition — gate everything. Make them before the SEC designs the launch, or the SEC will design around their absence.
Grounded in
PChapter-level health literacy campaign; Diffusion of Innovations for rollout
DC HOSA construction combining three R-graded instruments (organizational audit, PEMAT, Ambassador guideline). Rollout sequencing per Rogers (R). Standards of Excellence tiers as settled 7 Sep 2026.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/community.html#community-health-literacy-challenge  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Community